


Starting Again

by sweeterthankarma



Category: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)
Genre: 500 Words Challenge, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 15:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma
Summary: Lauren looks at him, and it’s impossible for her heart not to hammer in her chest, for her hands not to shake a little, because it's Reynolds, waiting at her car after work, just having finished pouring out his heart and soul after years of unfinished business had lingered between them.





	Starting Again

**Author's Note:**

> Reynolds and Evie are so sweet together, but Reynolds and Bloom's dynamic captured me from day one. They're so complex, complicated, and passionate on their own, and together they're fascinating. I wish we could have seen more of them before they called it quits, and I hope that eventually they'll find their way back to each other, at least as stronger friends. 
> 
> This fic is set in the future— a few years after where canon currently is, so I imagined Lauren to be back at New Amsterdam and both of them to be single. I really just wanted an excuse to finally write them and once the idea hit me I had to go with it!

Lauren looks at him, and it’s impossible for her heart not to hammer in her chest, for her hands not to shake a little. Her throat runs dry, a lump already forming in the the back of it as she swallows back her emotions, and she curses her sensitivity, the easiness with which she cries in situations both good and bad, especially as of late. She’s been through too much in the past month alone, had her heart twisted and trampled more than she’d ever imagined it could be, and so the situation at hand: Reynolds, waiting at her car after work, just having finished pouring out his heart and soul after years of unfinished business had lingered between them— it must be too good to be too true.

    “I…” she starts weakly but trails off. She tries again. “What about your family? About what they expected for you? What they wanted for you?”

Reynolds shrugs and gives her a simple smile. “I figured it out and I told them. They understand.”

    “Figured what out?” Lauren asks, though she already knows the answer. She wants to hear him say it,  _ needs  _ to hear him say it— the truth of the matter, that he wants her, that he’s choosing her— and he knows her well enough to know that she needs the validation; no one’s ever chosen her before. Not even her own family.

Reynolds steps closer and fights the urge to reach for her hands and pull her to him.  _ Maybe,  _ his brain tells him,  _ if you play this right, you can do that soon enough.  _ That thought had been the only thing pushing him through the motions this past day— hell, this past week— while he’d been brainstorming how exactly to come to Lauren with this: with his feelings, with the truth. It’s been so long since they’ve discussed this and he’s self-aware and ever-shameful with how bad he’s been, almost historically so, with his feelings in the past. Especially with Lauren.

    “I figured out,” he says, “that love isn’t about what other people want. It’s about what you want.”

Lauren stares at him for a minute, as if reeling from his words— and she is, absolutely, but also she’s a woman full of fire and so Reynolds wonders, just for a second, if she’s going to slap him or laugh in his face. 

Instead, she breathes out a deep sigh and lurches into his arms. “Took you long enough,” she mutters, and then his mouth is back on hers for the first time in years and she remembers why she couldn’t give this up, why she couldn’t give him up, why she couldn’t give  _ them  _ up. (Little does she know he’s thinking the same exact thing.) Her fingers curl around his neck, drawing him in, and his lips are warm and soft and just like she had remembered. Except now he’s truly, honestly hers, with every desired string attached, and it’s far sweeter than she could have imagined.  

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please let me know! Comments, kudos, and subscriptions make my day. :) You can find me on Tumblr under the same username, sweeterthankarma.


End file.
